A £3.1 MILLION push to create more electric vehicle charging points in the district has been welcomed, with a meeting told that one local village has no public charging points.
Bradford will get a share of £15m awarded to West Yorkshire by Government to introduce new charging points in areas that currently lack such facilities, such as terraced streets.
Around 1,000 charging points will be installed in 230 locations across the district starting in March.
The investment was discussed by Bradford Council’s Executive at a meeting on Tuesday.
Clare Adamson, Net Zero Project Manager for the Council, told the meeting that relying on commercial EV charging stations created “inequalities” – as inner-city residential areas and roads with no off street parking were unlikely to have any points for people to charge electric vehicles.
The shift from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles in the district would require a much wider roll out of EV charging points – she told members.
Cllr Rebecca Poulsen (Cons, Worth Valley) pointed out that one village in her ward, Oxenhope, had no public EV charging points, and any push to boost EV provision was welcome.
A report to the meeting said: “The scheme draws chargepoint sites from across the district focused on areas of high housing densities without off-street parking.”
The charging points would operate on a pay-as-you-go basis and use contactless payment systems.
Cllr Poulsen said: “I think we are all in agreement that this is very much needed. Bradford is below where we should be for charging points.”
But she said she had concerns about the roll out – pointing out previous difficulties in introducing EV charges in certain areas.
She added: “Oxenhope has no public EV charging points at all. The village Council has been trying to bring a charging point to a car park in the community centre, but they have been trying for over a year to get Bradford Council to put a charger in.”
She hoped this new EV roll out would be smoother.
Richard Gelder, Highways Service Manager, acknowledged that previous experiences of introducing charging points in some areas was “not great” but added: “There is a lot more integration between highways teams now.”
Cllr Alex Ross Shaw, Executive for Regeneration, Planning and Transport, said: “It is good to see this coming forward and it builds on previous work we’ve done before, but on a different scale.
“For every instance where it hasn’t worked in the district there have been several others where there have been successes.”
The 1,000 charging points are expected to all be installed by 2027.
